The author makes an attempt at explaining the process of shaping of political identity of metropolitan
areas that are regarded as a sign of “new territorialities”, emerging due to globalization
as well as metropolization of modern states. Also, the author emphasizes that following by democratic
institutions (and thus political identity and subjectivity) the reforms of territorial structure
sanctioning new areas of shaping social reality plays an important role in proper functioning of
the democratic country. Modern France, as well as territorial reforms undertaken in 2010—2014,
constitutes the area of analyses and inquiries. Using a constructivist concept of political identity,
the author advances a thesis that citizens’ political identity is the aftermath of the emergence of
political market — a space for debate, competition and rivalry, whose settlement comes with the
political power. The emergence of autonomic public space in metropolitan areas must therefore
be the result of the political power being located on this level. Since the “power of the metropolis”
in France still remains incomplete, the metropolitan identity is at an early state of development.
Nonetheless, the reform effected in 2014 by the MAPTAM act, as well as the transformation of
the Metropolis of Lyon into a fully-fledged unit of territorial government prove that the empowerment
of major urban and metropolitan areas has already become a constant vector of transformations
within the French system of territorial organization, which will be accompanied with
new territorial political identities in the future.